 Great combat
 Huge game world
 No random battles
 Tons of customization

The Bad

 Story and game is poorly paced
 Graphics are showing their age
 Combat boils down to spamming healing spells
on allies

Grade

B

The Star Ocean series, while not as popular as Square-Enix's
two flagship series (Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior),
has been a solid offering that chose to be more sci-fi than
fantasy. The third installment finally made it to North America
in the form of Till the End of Time which is actually
the Director's Edition of the Japanese version. This enhanced
version comes with extra characters, a versus mode and is
devoid of the glitches that made the original Japanese release
crash.

The story setup is pretty simple: Fayt Leingod, his parents
and his close friend Sophia are on vacation on a resort planet
when the planet comes under attack. Fayt and Sophia escape
and then become separated when Fayt's escape pod crash lands
on a planet that's some hundreds of years behind development-wise.
After a rescue and subsequent crash on yet another primitive
planet, Fayt becomes involved in a civil war and eventually
the forced that have been tracking him down catch up with
him AGAIN. For the most part, the story takes a while
to get rolling, and even then it relies on a number of anime/manga
conventions to push the story long. Later on in the game,
the story takes a hard twist that proves to polarize most
fans - some find it brilliant, while others thought it trivialized
the previous two titles.

Unlike it's Square-Enix brethren, Till the End of Time
features no random battles. When you travel through areas,
you will see enemies on screen. Coming in contact with them
will put you into battle. Combat is fast and furious as it
plays out in real time. While your party consists of three
characters, you only control one at a time. Depending on the
abilities and AI pattern you give your allies, they will perform
attacks and actions on their own. Each of the characters learn
skills and attacks which can be equipped to one of the two
attack buttons or just set as a defensive action. Since you
are limited in how much you can set on each characters (skills
take up a certain amount of "space" to equip), you'll have
to make smart decisions about what to use. In battle, attacks
can be executed by holding down the specific attack button
at the range of the attack (short or long). Since the game
plays out in real time, you'll have to take into account the
speed of the attack, recovery, and its area of effect when
performing attacks. Because of this, battle proves to be exciting
and worth the time, unlike most turn-based affairs.

To keep players from spamming (overusing) attacks, each character
has a Fury gauge that declines through movement and use of
attacks and spells. When the gauge is at 100, characters automatically
block quick attacks. This same block can be broken through
heavy attacks, which, in rock-paper-scissors fashion, can
be beaten with quick attacks. One other limitation placed
on players is an item limitation which keeps you from buying
a ton of items to use. Early on this may be a problem, but
as you gain better healing spells and just get all around
better at the game, this limitation seems less harsh.

Along with the standard story-forwarding RPG conventions,
Till the End of Time has a item creation system that
allows players to invent items for their own personal use
and profit. Be the first to create an item and get the patent
for it and you can earn all sorts of money from it. Of course,
to make some of the better items, you'll need to find and
recruit some of the best inventors the game has to offer.
In fact, at one point in the game, you will be able to create
an item to use on your weapons which completely "breaks"
combat, ramping up your attack power noticeably.

Probably one of the better aspects of the game is the inclusion
of trophies that can be earned by performing any number (or
variety) of requirements. Defeating enemies in one hit, by
a certain value of damage or without taking a hit all earn
you trophies. Of course, to do this you have to start a trophy
save file early in the game. Along with this are your standard
RPG mini-games available as a diversion in Gemity, including
a Battle Arena and an unlockable Versus Mode found in Peterny.

Visually, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time relies
on its anime-style roots to present the characters. While
this limits their visual moods to a degree, the character
models are animated well enough to carry the action and story.
Enemy models falls somewhere between interesting and just
plain boring - some look nice and show some great detail,
while others feel like filler. Locations fall into the same
dichotomy - some areas are wonderfully detailed and most of
the towns are pretty huge and have a lot going for them. Other
areas, like certain travel paths, are plain with some seriously
muddled textures. During combat and some of the more animated
story sequences, there are some nice visual effects, but these
seem lacking when you're just walking around the game world.
Since this game took so long to get to North America, I have
to think that the graphics suffer from being about a good
year behind the times.

Audiowise, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time fares
much like the graphics. The music and sound effects do a wonderful
job at establishing tone. Music themes are appropriate for
the locations and even a few tracks are enjoyable in their
own right. While this soundtrack pales to the likes of Shin
Megami Tensei: Nocturne, it does a good enough job. Till
the End of Time features a lot of voice acting, most of
which is performed by seasoned anime veterans. Fans of anime
dub will recognize most of the voices immediately. A few of
the voices work nicely (Nel, Albel, Fayt), while others tend
to be quirky (Cliff). And then there's the voice of Farleen,
who actually made me want to skip story sequences because
it was so wretchedly bad.

As much as I enjoy the gameplay and experience offered to
me in Till the End of Time, there are some major aspects
that could have used some work. First and foremost is the
story. Not so much so the story itself as that's all up to
personal preference, but the actual pacing of the story. The
player spends way too much time on Elicoor II. So much time
is spent on this planet that it throws the rest of the game
out of whack pace-wise. In terms of gameplay, the biggest
fault that the game has is that the further into the game
you get, the less the player will find themselves actually
attacking. Since battles go so fast and furious, you'll likely
find yourself sticking with the healer and spamming heal spells
on your attackers to keep them alive.

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time isn't perfect. It
took a while to get here, but the resulting game is still
an enjoyable effort to tide players over until the next Final
Fantasy or Dragon Warrior comes out. The combat
is fun and there's a lot to do, so expect to invest a number
of hours before you're done.

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